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Poet laureate, title granted in England for poetic excellence. Its holder is a salaried member of the British royal household, but the post has come to be free of specific poetic duties.
The office is remarkable for its continuity. It began with a pension granted to Ben Jonson by James Tin 1616, confirmed and increased by Charles Tin 1630 (when an annual “butt of canary wine” was added, to be discontinued at the request of Henry James Pye—made laureate in 1790—who preferred the equivalent in money). Jonson’s pension specifically recognized his services to the crown as a poet and envisaged their continuance, but not until 16 months after Jonson’s death in 1637 was a similar pension for similar services granted to Sir William Davenant. It was with Dryden’s appointment in 1668, within a week of Davenant’s death, that the laureateship was recognized as an established royal office to be filled automatically when vacant.
At the Revolution of 1688, Dryden was dismissed for refusing the oath of allegiance, and this gave the appointment a political flavour, which it retained for more than 200 years. Dryden’s successor, Thomas Shadwell, inaugurated the custom of the New Year and birthday odes that hardened into a tradition between 1690 and about 1820, becoming the principal mark of the office. The odes were set to music and performed in the sovereign’s presence. On his appointment in 1813, Robert Southey sought unsuccessfully to end this custom, but, although it was allowed tacitly to lapse, it was only finally abolished by Queen Victoria.
Her appointment of Wordsworth in 1843 signified that the laureateship had become the reward for eminence in poetry, and the office since then has carried no specific duties. The laureates from Tennyson onward have written poems for royal and national occasions as the spirit has moved them.
The list of poets laureate (with the date of their appointment) follows: Dryden (1668), Shadwell (1688), Nahum Tate (1692), Nicholas Rowe (1715), Laurence Eusden (1718), Colley Cibber (1730), William Whitehead (1757), Thomas Warton (1785), Henry James Pye (1790), Southey (1813), Wordsworth (1843), Tennyson (1850), Alfred Austin (1896), Robert Bridges (1913), John Masefield (1930), C. Day Lewis (1968), and Sir John Betjeman (1972). Among those who refused the honour were Thomas Gray (1757), Sir Walter Scott (1813), and William Morris (1894).
The title of the office stems from traditions concerning the laurel dating to the earliest Greek and Roman times. See coronation of the poets.
poetry 14:599, almost impossible to define, is formally recognizable and distinguishable from prose composition by its greater dependence on the line, which changes its appearance on the page.
The text article covers the difficulty or impossibility of defining poetry; man’s familiar acquaintance with it nevertheless; the differences between poetry and prose; the idea of form in poetry; poetry as a mode of thought; and what little may be said in prose of the spirit of poetry.
